Iraq under the surge – Volume 13, Issue 2 – March 2007

In September 2006, with violence continuing to escalate in Iraq, US President George W. Bush initiated a complete review of his administration’s failing policy. Two White House advisers, retired General Jack Keane and neo-conservative military historian Frederick Kagan, came to dominate the re-working of Iraq policy. They caught the president’s attention by arguing that victory was still achievable and could be delivered by investing a greater number of US troops in Baghdad over an 18-month period. It was this approach that the president adopted when he announced the change of policy in a nationwide speech in early January. The ‘surge’ involves increasing American force levels in Iraq by 15%. An extra 21,500 troops are being added to the 132,000 in the country, bringing the total of US soldiers in Baghdad up to 32,500.

 

The decision to focus on Baghdad and Anbar province was recognition that the nature of the conflict in Iraq had been transformed over the previous year and a half. On 22 February 2006, one of Shia Islam’s holiest shrines, the al-Askariyya Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, was destroyed. The attack was a deliberate and successful attempt to exacerbate sectarian tensions and trigger a civil war. It marked a watershed moment in post-invasion Iraq, accelerating already mounting sectarian violence and the resultant population transfers. In the aftermath of the al-Askariyya bombing, military sources estimated that Baghdad’s homicide rate tripled from 11 to 33 deaths a day, with 365,000 Iraqis being forced from their homes. The United Nations calculated that 34,452 civilians were killed during 2006. Against this background the US military is now involved in an attempt to contain a civil war that has its epicentre in Baghdad, with 80% of all sectarian violence occurring within 30 miles of the city.

 

The new US military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has just finished writing the latest army and marine field manual on counter-insurgency. The surge is his attempt to apply this new doctrine to Iraq. Previous military strategy had focused on reducing the public profile of US troops: its aim was to keep them in barracks as much as possible. Their place would be taken by newly trained Iraqi forces. The surge, or Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (imposing the law) as it is called in Baghdad, is a complete reversal of this approach. US forces are being moved from the large heavily fortified military bases on the edge of the city to be stationed among the population.

 

Operation Fardh al-Qanoon has divided Baghdad into nine sectors. Under this plan, American troops are embedded in 27 Joint Security Stations or mini-forts spread out across the city. They share these bases with members of the Iraqi army and police force. The mixing of US military personnel with both the Iraqi police and army is deliberate. The deployment of indigenous forces puts a ‘local face’ on the operation, providing both language skills and an attempt to reduce friction between the population and the new security stations. The mixed bases are also designed to facilitate a direct transfer of operational capacity from the US military to its Iraqi counterparts. The infusion of a greater number of American troops will tend to restrain  the colonisation of the Iraqi security forces by political parties and militias. The Iraqi police force has been heavily infiltrated by rival militias run by Moqtada al-Sadr and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Both have been guilty of using the police to carry out widespread sectarian killings. The Iraqi army, on the other hand, has managed to avoid such a thoroughgoing politicisation. By stationing personnel from both the army and police together in local bases it is hoped that militias’ influence can be squeezed out, using the US and Iraqi militaries to impose a degree of discipline on the police.

 

Following best counter-insurgency practice developed by the British in Malaya and the Americans in Vietnam, the Joint Security Stations act as the hub for security provision in their sector. Selected areas are first cleared of insurgents and militias. They are then ‘gated’, or cordoned off with road blocks and security checks. Residents are issued with security passes, and movement in and out of the area is monitored. Finally, once order has been imposed, reconstruction money is to be funnelled in.

 

The logic of this plan sees Joint Security Stations acting as the most visible sign of government capacity in each area. The population is shown the direct benefits, in terms of security, stability and reconstruction, of a government presence in their local community. This, it is hoped, will engender loyalty to the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, thus slowly reducing the space within which militias and insurgents can operate. Petraeus hopes that by integrating Iraqi forces with Americans and combining economic reconstruction with military force, casualties can be minimised. The ethos is to move away from the kinetic deployment of brute military force that has done so much to alienate the Iraqi population from the US military. Instead of breaking down doors and raiding houses at night, the policy is now centred on ‘cordon and knock’, sectioning off areas and then slowly moving through them with a degree of care and precision.

 

The surge began in Baghdad on 13 February. Initial indications suggested that it had a significant effect on the levels of violence in Baghdad. Economic activity increased as people felt able to return to work. There was also limited evidence that small numbers of people displaced by sectarian violence had returned to their homes.

On 14 March, General Qassim Moussawi, the Iraqi military spokesperson, announced that 265 people had been murdered in Baghdad over the previous 30 days, compared to the 1,440 killed during the preceding month. The US military spokesperson, Major-General William Caldwell, although not as positive, did argue that murders and executions had dropped by over 50%. Car bombings, the weapon most feared by Iraqis, were also down to 36 from 56. However attacks on US and Iraqi forces were still running at 200 a day.

 

For the surge to be successful, the reduction in violence will have to be sustained over the months to come. There was strong evidence to indicate that the current decline in sectarian-motivated violence was largely owing to a tactical decision taken by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Sadr himself was reported to have fled to Iran to avoid arrest. The Mahdi Army took its forces off the streets, reducing its operations to avoid confrontations with the US military. The surge thus created a decline in violence, but the militia’s tactical decision to withdraw its forces from the areas affected meant there had been no mass disarmament of those responsible for the previous upsurge in killings. Conversely, violence was displaced to the fringes of Baghdad, with attacks on US forces rising by 70% in Diyala province, northwest of the capital.

 

There were strong arguments to suggest that the new policy required more troops. Petraeus’s manual on counter-insurgency recommended – in line with a RAND study published in 2003 – that occupying forces would need 20 security personnel (both police and troops) per 1,000 of the population, meaning that coalition forces would need between 400,000 and 500,000 soldiers to impose order on Iraq. (Even this figure compares unfavourably to the estimated 43 per 1,000 that sustained Saddam in power.) As it is presently configured, the surge in Baghdad (a city of 6 million people) amounts to one American soldier for every 184 residents.  The shortfall was recognised by the Pentagon, with Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England telling Congress in early March that US commanders may need an additional 7,000 troops. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that for the surge to be successful it would need even greater numbers, anything between 15,000 and 28,000 more troops.

 

The surge may be vulnerable to a larger, infrastructural problem. For sustainable stability to be delivered, the Iraqi government needs to build up its administrative capacity: establish the rule of law and create institutional capacity for governance. But there are grave doubts about the ability of the Iraqi government to follow up the clear phase of counter-insurgency with the infrastructural build stage. In the aftermath of a successful US counter-insurgency operation to gain control of the northern city of Tal Afar, the Iraqi government proved reluctant to secure this victory by deploying government resources. US forces found themselves unable to persuade the Iraqi government to release funds for this Sunni-populated area.

 

There are broader concerns about the capacity of the Maliki government. Since he became prime minister in 2006, Maliki has struggled to impose coherence on his cabinet, let alone the government beyond it. The electoral system that brought the government into office delivers political power not to the prime minister, but to the parties and then the coalitions. This means that Maliki as prime minister is not first among equals, but a negotiator attempting to facilitate agreement among the different parties. This agreement is achieved by dividing government ministries among the parties as spoils of electoral success. The resources and jobs they bring are deployed by the parties as assets to build up a constituency, not to increase the power of the Iraqi state. As a result, skilled civil servants have been sacked from their positions to make way for party apparatchiks. Government capacity has been undermined by party corruption.

 

Central to the American counter-insurgency doctrine is the delivery of resources and government capacity to the population in an attempt to win them away from the insurgents. If the surge is to work, the US military needs to involve itself not only in the imposition of order, but also the reform of government institutions. Maliki, with strong US backing, needs to reduce the power of the parties in his coalition as he simultaneously imposes some form of centralised logic on the state. If he does not succeed in this difficult and complex task then the comparative stability delivered from the surge will not be sustainable in the medium to long term.

 

Given the difficulties to be overcome for the surge’s success, it is no surprise that the US administration is actively investigating alternatives, developing a plan C and a plan D. Plan C recognises the weakness of Maliki’s position and would seek to resolve this by backing a new leader, a ‘strong man’, to impose order on the government and the country beyond. Two candidates have been identified, Adel Abdul Mahdi, the second-in-command of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and former prime minister Iyad Allawi. This option faces two big obstacles. Firstly, the political parties which fought two elections in 2005 would fiercely object to any attempts at reducing their power and at removing them from lucrative positions in government ministries. Such a fight would further destabilise Iraq. Secondly, the appointment of a new Iraqi strong man to run the country would in no way overcome the central problem dominating Iraq since 2003, the collapse of the state: a strong man would have few if any institutions through which to rule.

 

The final option, plan D, has been termed the ‘El Salvador model’. From 1981 to 1992, El Salvador was racked by a bloody civil war. The US Congress placed severe restrictions on US government involvement, under which  the Pentagon could send only 55 advisers to support the Salvadorean government. However, it is argued that their influence within the security forces proved decisive. They slowly reformed the army and police force, making them more efficient and loyal to the government. The Salvadorean model is now finding support among US military and government advisers. This would see the bulk of US forces sent home and a comparatively small number of US advisers, certainly no more than a few thousand, left to work with the Iraqi government. Again, this model does little or nothing to address the central problem dominating Iraq: the absence of state capacity. If the state cannot be rebuilt, American advisers will have nothing to work with and the Iraqi politicians they are meant to be influencing will have no presence within society.

 

Given the lack of good alternatives, the surge implemented by Bush in January 2007 is this administration’s final attempt at imposing order on post-Saddam Iraq. If it fails, then the next US president will face very tough policy choices.